Voices for Voices®

When Faith Meets Fiction: Building Characters Through Christ's Eyes | Episode 211

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 211

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When Faith Meets Fiction: Building Characters Through Christ's Eyes | Episode 211

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What if the very challenges you face could become your greatest creative strengths? Meet Gabriel Bloor, a dyslexic author who transforms his neurodivergent thinking into a superpower for crafting immersive fictional worlds.

"My mother told me for the longest time my dyslexia is not a weakness but a superpower," shares Bloor, whose unique cognitive perspective allows him to simultaneously inhabit his characters while maintaining a bird's-eye view of his entire fictional universe. This dual perspective creates a reading experience that multiple readers have described as "like watching a movie."

Bloor's writing journey began at 13 with simple story completion exercises assigned by his homeschooling mother as a prerequisite for video game time. What started as a childhood task exploded into a prolific creative process that has yielded approximately 120 book starts over the past decade. His approach to character creation happens instantaneously—full personalities, appearances, and backgrounds materializing in his mind with remarkable detail. The only exception? Names, which he admits slip from his memory almost immediately.

What distinguishes Bloor in the Christian fiction landscape is his willingness to explore darker psychological themes. Currently pursuing a psychology degree at a Christian college, he incorporates this knowledge into stories like his upcoming comic series "Crosshairs of My Heart"—following a high school bounty hunter funding his mother's cancer treatment while navigating faith, temptation, and first love.

For fellow creatives struggling with mental health challenges or neurodivergence, Bloor offers transformative advice: "Find your weakness in your strengths and find your strengths in your weakness." Through understanding how his mind works—sometimes hyperfocused, other times scattered—he's adapted his creative process accordingly, even using music that matches the emotional tone of scenes he's writing.

Discover Gabriel Bloor's work on Amazon under his name, featuring poetry collections including "Gabriel's Message," or find him on Rumble as "TheCustodian" where he shares insights about his creative process, books, and more. Join us for a fascinating journey inside the mind of an author who proves that our greatest perceived limitations often contain our most unique gifts.

Author Gabriel Bloor shares his unique approach to writing as someone with dyslexia, revealing how his neurodivergent thinking creates immersive fictional worlds that readers experience like watching movies. He discusses his journey from struggling with basic storytelling as a teen to developing complex characters and worlds that incorporate psychological depth within Christian fiction.

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I'm your host, founder and executive director of Voices Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for all the love and support you've given us. We are over 209 episodes, I believe, at this point.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We have a few in the bag that are coming out here, and this is going to be one of them in the future short term that we're going to share off cycle, because the content conversation is a lot of current events and so we want to just make sure we get that out ahead of time instead of holding back.

Justin Alan Hayes:

If you can, if you can subscribe, if you can like share all that fun stuff, we would appreciate it.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And again, you can find us anywhere, from anywhere from YouTube, rumble, audio, basically any type of audio podcast platform that you like and you prefer then that's great for us because we're there, and so we are very, very excited for this episode, as we are very, very excited for this episode, as we are all episodes, because what we're sharing is information, current events and then, as well, as you know, uplifting what it takes to be an author type of drive and determination and passion that does it take?

Justin Alan Hayes:

Because there are, as other areas there are, you know, different levels. You know somebody like myself puts a little you know, 80, 90 page pamphlet together on my mental health journey or some career tips, or you know we talk about books that are much longer and and take a lot, a lot of time developing characters. You know who they are, you know sometimes what they look like from a creative standpoint, but that's not my specialty. That's the specialty of our, our guests today. So we want to thank Gabriel Bloor for joining us on this episode. We are very grateful for him joining us.

Gabriel Bloor:

Yeah, thank you, I'm Jonathan, justin, sorry, thank you for having me. You know, to go on the topic of pamphlets, the difference between pamphlets and writing novels, I think it just depends on your mindset. I mean, I can't say I have published two poetry books that are basically like a pamphlet, but they're just a collection of poems that I have on Amazon, of poems that I have on Amazon. But I think it's all about how one sees writing. Could I write a pinflip on mental health? Probably not.

Gabriel Bloor:

I probably shouldn't touch on the subject, since I would consider myself not the most mentally stable due to a number of reasons. I mean, I won't say it as a crutch, but my superpower is I'm dyslexic and in being that, when I write a story, I don't create just a story, I make an entire world and everything that surrounds it. I could tell you what it would smell like, what it would taste like, what it feels in the atmosphere. I have a very what I've been told is a very unique way and approach to writing as an author, unlike most Christian authors, I tap into the more dark, psychological, because I am getting my bachelor's in psychology in a Christian college that I'm going to at Luther Rice. I'm also. I write first person. I really struggle writing third person, and first person allowed me to write an immersion that really isn't seen in Christian fiction yeah, yeah, uh.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So how did your interest in in writing and uh, how'd that get started?

Gabriel Bloor:

well, I can actually tell you. It was. I was 13 years old and my mother I was homeschooled and one of the books that I had to do before, one of the things I had to do before I was allowed to play video games um, it was because I played too much when I was growing up. My mom was like, don't teach him to play, he'll never stop. Okay, fine, you want to play, you have to do X, y, z. So one of the things I had to do was I had to do this big book and it was story starters and you would read the story and you had to end it, and so I did that, and then I was allowed to play and after a couple of weeks of me doing it, I went to my mother one day. I'm like mommy, I want to write my own superhero story.

Gabriel Bloor:

11 years from then, to who I am now, I've started at least 120 books in less than a decade, and it was not until the past four years that I actually got more serious in my writing. But I had, with all those books that I had started, my the Lord was teaching me how to write when my mother was first trying to teach me how to do oral narrations. She really, we had a hard time because I wasn't very detailed, I wasn't very specific. My mother would ask me okay, gabriel, tell me about the story A frog hopped in water. Okay, and then what? There was a splash. I went from that I want to say five years old to I have been told at least officially, three times by three different people that when they read my stories it's like watching a movie oh, that's awesome.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Uh, have you? Have you delved into entertainment and media like movies and comics?

Gabriel Bloor:

I actually. It's funny. You should say that I actually recently found an illustrator for a comic book that I'm working on. I have no artistic capability at all. I screw up a stick figure. I screw up a stick figure Me too.

Gabriel Bloor:

Simplest thing out there. I can't even do that. Artistry is not my forte. I am more of an artist with words, especially when it comes to poetry. So I have an artist working on a comic book, a comic series called Crosshairs of my Heart, okay, and that is a story leading about a young man, actually a high schooler, who took up bounty hunting after his father, who was a hitman, died to raise the funds necessary for his mother's chemotherapy. He's roughly 18 years old. So the crosshairs of my heart deals with two main topics of my heart.

Gabriel Bloor:

Deals with two main topics. One it is his. It is him in his walk with christ, as he has to deal with a more edgy lifestyle, because bounty hunting isn't easy, and there's two kinds of bounty hunting. You have a bounty hunting where you're working with the gut, working with the police force, looking for criminals, and you have bounty hunting hired by criminals to go kill people, and so he he's in that middle, even though he does work with a specific police officer, the chief of police in his area.

Gabriel Bloor:

There are times where the temptation to get that higher pay is tempting, so it will lead across that. So while he's walking this path, his walk with Christ isn't the greatest in the beginning, but this is going to have him lean more on Christ to provide his needs, to protect his mom and to guard him from those temptations. But also, at the same time, there's this new girl in his high school that gets transferred in that he ends up becoming attracted to. So he has to learn to balance those things his work being with his mom, and then this new girl at school, even though he's more kept to himself.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow, very, very detailed. What's the research process like? I mean, you can use the bounty hunter or another character. Is it just what's in your mind, or are there certain ways to go about it?

Gabriel Bloor:

I have multiple ways. I'm stimulus hungry how my brain works. I can literally pull a string from one thing and I can create an entire web. That's just how my brain works. I mean, some people would consider this cheating, but I do use chat GPA for one purpose. I do not have it write my story. That's one. That's cheating. Two, that's too easy. Where's the fun in that? None, what I use chat for is I have it. Look for names, because the names of my characters are very specific. My character, elias Dante. Elias means oh gosh. Of my characters are very specific, my character, elias dante. Um, oh, elias means oh gosh. Give me just a second I have you're good I have.

Gabriel Bloor:

I kept it on my notes because what I do is that I either ask for advice like how does get feedback? Because it's hard for me to get feedback for okay, hold on, that's not it. Hold on, super, super, super. It should be right here. Why isn't it not right here? That's not it. Why can't I find it? I can't find it.

Gabriel Bloor:

Blast, okay, then I can't find it no worries either way, it's supposed it's something about like god is my strength or god is my protector. It's one of that. That's one of the reasons why I named him elias dante. Well, the work, the last name, dante um, was from dante's inferno. Okay, but I haven't read the book. But I liked, because of Dante, the title, just Dante's Inferno. Elias will go through his own Inferno. So that was kind of the correlation between the two. That's how it works in my head.

Gabriel Bloor:

As for research, I've watched a couple movies with Bounty Hunting in it. I've played a couple video games with Bounty Hunting in it, so for me that really piled in quite easily. I mean, for my kind of brain, I can have something back in the back of my head just stewing for a while and then I'll have something else come in and those two will mix and I'm like I have this idea and it's, and then it just spirals down. I don't. I've heard. I've spoken to several authors. I've spoken with david solomon. My best friend's an author. My father's an author, my sisters, my sisters, are authors. My, my brothers are authors. They all write in some form or fashion. When they're developing characters, when they're building worlds, it's like, okay, we put this in, then this, and then add this in this.

Gabriel Bloor:

I'm like, okay, this is how it works for me in my head when I create a story Watch, no one will do that great. It just flips like that. I can have you character, body type, color, eyes, shape, skin. The only thing I will not have is a name when it comes to names, names are my weakness, names are my. When it comes to names, names are my weakness. As earlier, I mixed your name up because it's like that's how fast names go out of my head. But once I have the name down, I can usually have the whole character, and once I have the whole character, I can start building the world. That's one of the main reasons why I use chat was for names. I have names. It is done, it is done?

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, I think an area. So, with you being dyslexic, I have depression, and anxiety and ADD, adhd, all the Sounds about right.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, and so I totally get when you say you have an idea stewing in the back of your mind and it's just there. But then once that thing, whatever that is and we might not know what it is until we see it when that thing comes up, it really, like you said, it meshes and it really goes together For individuals watching, listening, that think that I'm dyslexic or I have depression or I have bipolar or whatever the challenge might be. Whatever the challenge might be, what's your advice to them to power on, if being an author is something they want, or if something else is interesting in them and they may have been told no, or they may have not pursued that, can you maybe just touch on that? Or they may have not pursued that. Can you maybe just touch on that?

Gabriel Bloor:

You know I can't touch on that. My mother told me for the longest time my dyslexia is not a weakness but a superpower. And I'm like where, where, mother, please enlighten me in your wisdom. If I have this superpower, then why does it feel like a weakness? Why does it feel like I'm always being chained down? Why can I not fly? And then I do.

Gabriel Bloor:

I also suffer from anxiety. I suffer from depression. I, my mother, has ADHD, so it's likely I have ADHD. I can see symptoms of it. I am taking psychology. I have kind of self-diagnosed. Even they say don't do that. But I'm like I kind of know myself.

Gabriel Bloor:

Self-reflection is a really president thing. I self-reflect more times a day than that's probably mentally healthy. But regardless, it's not like I can stop myself because I overthink things. But after a while I mean I would talk to my father about my writing, talk to these people about my writing. Heck, I've even spoke to chat. I'm like chat.

Gabriel Bloor:

Let me tell you what I've done as an author. I've wrote a 500-page book in nine months. It has it is literally one event tied in by four. It is one event tied in by four different perspectives. So each book is one main character tied in by four different perspectives. So each book is one main character. And then there was this, and then I was pulling this, and then I was just layering all these things and it just clicked. I am able to 3D, pull myself out and see everything. And that's when I realized wait a minute, this is a superpower.

Gabriel Bloor:

How many authors do you know can both be the person within the story and yet go out, turn around and then observe everything in the background? Are you familiar with Sherlock Holmes? Yeah, have you seen the BBC Sherlock? Yes, his mind palace. That's how mine works. It goes in my head, I take it in and then I just look through all the rooms. I'm like, okay, does this fit here? Does that fit there? Is this the right coat of paint? Is this smell going to somehow help me in the future? This is how my dyslexic brain works. It puts everything together and then it just goes and it just locks in. What you need to do, my advice, is that find your strengths, find your weaknesses, find your weakness in your strengths and find your strengths, find your weaknesses, find your weakness in your strengths and find your strengths in your weakness. With my dyslexia, I can either be hyper-focused or so dis-focused. It's not even funny Because I'll be all over the place and everyone thinks you're not paying attention. It's like wrong. I'm paying attention to everything but nothing's clicking in my head. That is both the strength and the weakness of my dyslexia, but since I know that, I know how to adjust myself to it.

Gabriel Bloor:

Don't always think I'm a negative person by nature. I am a very, very negative person. I literally caught myself being positively negative at one point. It was like ouch a different light. You can't always see yourself through your own eyes. As a Christian, we have to see ourselves through the eyes of Christ. How does he see us In the Bible? When I see Christ, when he looks at me, he sees my beloved child, my humble servant, my chosen creation. And I'm not saying chosen as in. I am so special, jesus chose me. No, I'm saying my chosen creation. And I'm not saying chosen as in. I am so special, jesus chose me. No, I'm saying my chosen creation because Jesus Christ died on the cross for me. Any Christian can say, when they think of Jesus seeing them, my chosen one, because we are all precious equally in the Lord's eyes.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, that's so powerful, do you? I'm trying to think, as you're going through this creative process where, whatever stage you're at in a project, do you play music or do you have to have silence, do you have a certain place you go and if you can maybe just share, I'm just wondering because for me to think I'm sorry, clearly others will say, well, that's not very clear. But for me to think, clearly, I like to have silence. But then there's other times where, to your point of, there's an event happening and you're taking it all in and going, oh my gosh, like this thing connects to that thing, and others can think that we're not focused, like you said, that like oh we, oh we're, yeah, we're all over the place. But when it gets to that time where we need to lock in for whatever project that that may be, I'm, I'm just curious if you have, um, how, how you?

Gabriel Bloor:

uh, well, let your mind know I I can't say I actually have a place where I can go um, because I'm the church custodian and I can't drive yet, even though I'm 24. I mean, it's just the nature of the beast. We've lived in an RV for about four years. It's not like it was very easy and there's just been so much. Now me, I can literally pick any spot and start writing. That's one of my strengths. However, my problem can be is that I get distracted easily and I, depending on what the situation is, can't write.

Gabriel Bloor:

But I do listen to music. I listen to a large variety of music. For some books I've literally found a song that I can take this song about this character, and whenever I hear this song I can write about this character like my fingers are on fire, um. But other songs, I with other stories. I have to go through a playlist and they have to rotate. Sometimes I need to listen to the song that matches the aura of what I'm writing. So I'll be looking for like darker songs for like darker scenes, lighter songs for lighter scenes, sad songs for sad scenes, more romantic songs for more romantic pieces. It really just depends. I mean, I'm just flexible like that.

Justin Alan Hayes:

No, that's incredible insight, as you're mentioning the scene that you're working on, the how music can, can, can play, and to somebody might be like, oh yeah, well, that makes complete sense. That's the first time I've ever heard, heard that and that makes it in in my mind. It makes perfect sense. It's like, well, of course, if you're working on the dark scene, this type music, if that's the route, that that's gone and I think that's, uh, something that it can be very helpful that you just do it like that's it. That's just how your mind operates. That uh, you, you work on, so you're working on, or have work on, 30 or so projects at a time.

Gabriel Bloor:

Those are the books, or the books, yeah, I about have like three TV shows that I have on a side project and I got a couple of video games that have been going through my head. I, when it comes to writing stories, whether for television, video games I don't really have a limit. My my biggest problem when it comes to stuff like that is learning the script writing. The script writing is my um is difficult for me, so I'm trying to learn um. It's one of the things I like about my illustrator, because with the script writing I'm kind of it's difficult because I'm used to going into such great detail, but I want to keep it simple. I don't want to over exasperate, but I also know, with my dyslexia, I do have some issues with like editing and whatnot. Some things pass over my head unless it's highlighted. It could be a moving car. I'll miss it well, until it hits me. Yeah, so that's the truth, in fact, but um I, when it comes to creative writing, I have no limit that's.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's fantastic. Uh, we're getting towards the end of this first episode. For those that, for whatever reason, might not catch our second episode, how can people learn more about you? Find the books that are out and just give a plug?

Gabriel Bloor:

Okay, well, you can find me on Amazon. It's Gabriel Bloor and one of the poetry books is called Gabriel's Message. You can also find me on Rubble. I'm called the Custodian. Capital T, capital C and the and custodian are put together. There is no space between the two, it has some. Actually, if you give me a second, I can put. I can do my background effect. Hold on, I can put it here. Take me just a second.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Sure.

Gabriel Bloor:

I do put. I do stay if I have a book out on Rumble. I also do game videos. I do all kinds of videos. Actually I try to podcast a couple times. Where is it? Here we go. Give it a second. There we go. The custodian.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow, that's awesome. I love it.

Gabriel Bloor:

It was a mix of Tron and like a there we go, the Custodian. Wow, that's awesome. I love it. It was a mix of Tron and like a Star Wars feel to it. I'm like, with that Assassin's Creed mix, I'm like, yeah, I like this one, I like the white and gray. So, yeah, the Custodian, it's going to have that face. That's where you can find me. I'll talk about my books, I'll talk about anything I'm doing. I'm doing live streams. So if you want to find me, you'll have my Facebook page there. You'll have a link to my website on Amazon and when my new book comes out with Last Chapter, which will be Project Chrysalis.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I will have that in the description as well. Great. Well, thank you for joining us on this episode. We're going to close this one out and then we'll come right back and continue our conversation with author Gabriel Bloor. Thank you for joining us. It's been a grateful and blessing to to have you share insight, literally inside your mind, how that, how that works and inspire uh, lots, of, lots of people out there I hope I can inspire others.

Gabriel Bloor:

That's, that's the, that's the dream. That's the dream is to inspire others and show christ through every step, even though it looks really ugly.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for joining us.

Gabriel Bloor:

Thanks for having me, Justin.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome and to our viewers and listeners. You can check out this and other episodes in our catalog anywhere you consume audio podcasts. We also have the video portion in 1080, high def in YouTube and Rumble as well. So until next time, please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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